


Happily ever after

by StepTowardsTheLight



Category: One Direction
Genre: AU, Babies, College, Dreams, M/M, author!zayn, proposal, writer!harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:37:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StepTowardsTheLight/pseuds/StepTowardsTheLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Description: Zayn has a dream. A dream to be a writer, to see his name on the cover of books, like the ones that fill his shelves. Harry has a dream. A dream to be an artist, to see his work on the walls of a gallery, to be looked at and admired by others. Zayn doesn’t believe in fate and he’s long since outgrown fairy tales but maybe, just maybe him and harry were made for each other. Just maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily ever after

Zayn wanted to be an author. That’s all he’d ever wanted to be. Ever since he first picked up a Dr Seuss book and fell in love with the brightly coloured pictures he’d wanted to do something like that for himself. 

Of course as he got older he grew out of Dr Seuss. It started with the classic children’s books. Enid blytons series like the famous five and secret seven, the narnia books and other things like that. Then it turned into adventures and magic. From the age of 9 he was enthralled by harry potter and he was constantly rereading the books. From there his reading seemed to know no bounds. Anything was ok. Sci-fi, romance, murder mystery, anything. He read and he read and as he did so he began to write. And as he wrote he began to dream to aspire. He decided he wanted to be an author when he was 11, it was the first career he’d ever fully decided on and he was determined to stick to it.

It was hard of course. His parents were always telling him to not get his hopes up, to not build everything up on this one dream only to have it come crashing down and hit him in the face. He needed a back up plan, a second option. A second option just seemed like a load of bullshit to Zayn. He was going to do this, why on earth would he need another option?

As he grew more his writing style changed and as did his outlook to life. Being the only Muslim child in a school with mainly white pupils wasn’t always the most fun thing in the world. He got picked on. Bullied. Teased. He became quiet and introverted, often skipping lunch to sit outside with a notebook and write his troubles away. His stories became darker and more adult to the point where his English teacher phoned his parents a couple of times to make sure everything was ok. Zayns parents demanded to read everything he wrote after that which took away the privacy he got from his notebooks. They thought zayn was depressed.

He was ok though.

At age 14 Zayn finally decided to stop letting his parents over-protectiveness get in the way of him. He started to write how he wanted to write, not how he thought they would want him to write and he got lost in in. Exploring new plots, new characters, new techniques. By his fifteenth birthday he’d won several writing competitions. By his fifteenth birthday he’ finished his first book. Admittedly he was the only one who would ever read it but it was a massive achievement to zayn. He celebrated internally for days.

At 15 Zayn moved school. He also started his GCSE’s which made everything about 100 times more stressful. He was plunged in at the deep end with most subjects but there was one subject he was happily floating in. English. His teachers noticed his brilliance at the subject almost instantly and, unlike his other school they encouraged him, providing him with opportunities to let his work grow. That was how he met harry styles. Aspiring photographer/artist. They were paired up to do some work for an unofficial school project. Zayn wrote the story Harry took the pictures and then some guy from the school newspaper turned it into an article. 

Their classmates were reading it for weeks.

Harry and Zayn became best of friends.

In a way the two weren’t that different. Sure harry was pale whilst zayn was tan and yes harry had green eyes were zayns were like dark chocolate but the way they thought was pretty similar. They both had dreams, aspirations that had been crushed and held back for so long. When they met each other it was almost an unspoken agreement that when one said ‘when im an author’ or ‘when im a artist’ the other sat and listened and agreed. They did many a project together, helping each other through their coursework and things like that. When they finished GCSE’s they graduated high school hand in hand.

Things got a bit tricky then. There was the chance that they wouldn’t pick the same college. That they would go away to do A levels and never see each other again. They fought a little bit over where they would go and their parents did as well. Harrys mum and dad split up leaving the now 16 year old distraught. Zayn looked after him and wrote him a story, figuring it was the nicest thing he could do. Harry painted him a picture as well and they swore that night that whatever the consequences they would go to the same college. 

Manchester was the one they chose in the end.

Zayn’s mum was the one who drove them down to the college, the two of them squished in their back seats with their entire lives packed up in boxes that surrounded them. The dorms had been too risky, they hated the idea of having to share with other people so they’d got themselves a little apartment with cheap enough rent. It wasn’t far from the college and they’d be able to be around each other most of the time. 

The flat building was nice and they soon made their apartment home like. Harry copied up a couple of pages from zayns favourite books in his neatest print and framed them. Zayn filled their living room with said books. Sure they argued a little bit, bickering like a married couple over what cereal they should buy and there was times when they didn’t see each other for days as they were too busy studying but it was working. They even managed to make some new friends. Zayn and Harry weren’t just Zayn and Harry any more. They were Zayn, Louis, Liam, Harry and Niall. The two best friends could hardly believe it when they met the three boys who lived in the apartment above them. Louis the singer. Liam the dancer. Niall the sound technician. Somehow they all just fit together. Zayn didn’t think he’d ever been so happy.

In fact it seemed like things only got better from there. He finished another book, storing it carefully with the other couple he’d written. The others were just childish none sense, stuff he refused to take seriously. This one however was his pride and joy. Harry suggested he showed it to his English professor so Zayn did. She fell in love with it and said something that had zayns heart soaring.

‘Why don’t you publish it?’

From then on Zayn was on cloud nine. His professor thought he had a chance and that was all it took to have Zayn completely convinced he sent it off to a couple little places, hoping it would do ok. He’d been so caught up in his writing that he hadn’t seen how harry was slowly beginning to distance himself. The curly haired boy had realised something and now he was trying to escape, scared how zayn would react. It took zayn a while to realise that something was wrong, figuring that harry was just working on a super special piece or something. It was only when he came home early from a lecture and found harry crying that he realised there was something going on with his Harry.

That was the night Harry came out. The night zayn and harry kissed for the first time. It wasn’t the last time either.

At first they were scared, distancing themselves from each other because the fact that they’d kissed made them both feel like they’d overstepped some massive line or something. It took Louis, Liam and niall for them to come to their senses and stop acting like 11 year olds. Zayn asked harry out. Harry said yes almost instantly. They were ZaynandHarry once again. For the most part things were great, if not a little bit pressured because ‘Holy shit zee these are our A levels’ but they got over the pressure easily. Zayns book got turned down by all the publishers he’d applied for, Harry was struggling to find buyers for his art and the rent was only just coming in but they were ok, they were doing good.

They passed their A levels and both decided that they didn’t want to continue education any further. They didn’t see the point and it just meant a lot of extra bills. Zayn was working his ass off trying to find someone interested in his novel and harry was trying to sell some pieces. Zayns parents gave them a bit of money of which most went to harrys art supplies but the rest zayn managed to use to pay someone to publish his work. He went to the local library and back to the collage, giving them his first editions (well, all but two) and praying someone somewhere would read it and think, wow. 

It didn’t really work like that.

Harry however was managing ok. He’d found his style, found his favourite materials and he was producing some really nice things. He started off selling at a car boot sale but then he got bigger and bigger. Soon his work was in the local art gallery. Zayn was immensely proud if not a little bit jealous. Harry was nothing but supporting though, Zayn would get published ‘these things just take time’ He’d soothe the boy before riding him to get his mind off of things. Zayn shrunk in on himself, devoting all his time to writing and nothing else. 

When he got a call from Bloomsbury publishers asking about his book he threw up…then gave them his email.

Within a month or so his book, his fucking book was on the shelves and he had a deadline for another one. Money was coming in fast now with both of the boys becoming more and more successful. It was still just Zayn and Harry though, nothing was going to stop that. Their mates, Liam louis and Niall had made it as well. It looked like it was going to be happy endings for all.

Until Zayns second book flopped and bloomsbury dropped him like a hot potato. 

Harry insisted it was ok and that he’d find someone else and that he really really was an amazing writer so there was nothing to worry about but zayn wasn’t convinced. He’d never felt so disheartened in his life. In all honesty he almost gave up on writing, gave up on his dream at age 19. But then his family and his friends and his harry brought him to his senses. He still had one book on the shelves, still had one almost best seller, that had to count for something right? He set about writing as best he could, the words seeming to be writing themselves most of the time. With harrys help he sent his work off again, to another publisher and crossed his fingers, praying to a god he didn’t really believe in. 

Again it took time but once again Zayn got his dream, his new book being published. Once again harry was there for him and they held hands as they read the first edition together, little smiles on their faces as they took in the words they already new by heart. That was when the first i love you was uttered.

By the time the pair of them were in 27 they were incredibly well of. Zayn was massively successful, his first novel (the one published by bloomsbury) was about to be turned into a film, something he couldn’t get over. Harry had his own studio, his work was brought often by the rich and famous. The pair of them had got their dream and they had each other, nothing could have been better. And it stayed that way really. The author and the photographer/artist. The green eyes and the brown. 

When they were 30 Zayn proposed to his harry, hiding the ring in harrys box of paints before he went to his studio to continue working on a piece. It was lunch time by the time Harry found it and he instantly called zayn, a massive smile on his face.

'yes' had been the only word he’d said before he was driving home and making love to zayn in their bedroom, ring safe on his finger.

Zayn thinks it’s cheesy but after that they lived happily ever after.

-fin-


End file.
